The Walls Kept Tumbling Down
by IWantColoredRain
Summary: Accidentally deleted the story but here it is, songfic to Pompeii by Bastille


**Disclaimer: I don't own Charmed or Pompeii by Bastille. I realize this isn't really a Christmas song but enjoy and Merry Christmas, and a happy New Year to everyone.**

 ** Pompeii**

 _Eheu eh-o eheu eh-o [x8]_

 _I was left to my own devices  
Many days fell away with nothing to show_

 _And the walls kept tumbling down  
In the city that we love  
Great clouds roll over the hills  
Bringing darkness from above_

If asked Chris would say that Piper Halliwell's murder was Wyatt's breaking point. Before that Wyatt always got whatever he wanted between his status as Twice-Blessed and his power of projection Wyatt had never wanted for anything because just a thought got him anything and everything he desired.

But even projection couldn't restore the dead to life and they couldn't even summon her because the Elders wouldn't let him. It was the first time Wyatt was refused and years later in the past the second child of the Charmed Ones would muse that perhaps if they had just let Piper be summoned Wyatt wouldn't have been so obsessed with power and control, to the point of murdering his own family to remove any threats to his rule. __

 _But if you close your eyes,  
Does it almost feel like  
Nothing changed at all?  
And if you close your eyes,  
Does it almost feel like  
You've been here before?  
How am I gonna be an optimist about this?  
How am I gonna be an optimist about this?_

Chris crouched under a wall to hide from the Witch Hunters and probes chasing him. He waited until he was certain they were gone to carefully peek above the jagged edge of the old wall. From where he was hiding he had a good view of the city. Camelot, formerly known as San Francisco was like vinegar hidden in honey, it was beautiful and covered up all the evil inside. But for a moment Chris closed his eyes and pretended everything was the way it used to be. Magic was hidden, Wyatt and Prue were good and the rest of the family was still alive. Then the yells of the Witch Hunters broke through as they spotted him and he turned and fled. __

 _We were caught up and lost in all of our vices  
In your pose as the dust settled around us_

 _And the walls kept tumbling down  
In the city that we love  
Great clouds roll over the hills  
Bringing darkness from above_

It was hard to see anything good in the world, he thought staring in numb horror at the crucifix that held Junior's dead body. Prue and Wyatt were evil, the Charmed Ones were dead, Uncle Henry had been brainwashed into becoming a Witch Hunter and killing Uncle Coop, Trisha had been burned because of her refusal to tell the Hunters where the Resistance HQ was, even little Pamela only ten years old hadn't escaped the slaughter of the Halliwells, having been killed in the fall of Magic School.

Then he felt a small, calloused hand envelope his and he looked over. Bianca grabbed his other hand and maneuvered him so his back was to his cousin's dead body and his left hand was on her stomach, feeling the fragile life inside her. He took hope from that, and he found the strength inside to hold onto it even when it was gone. __

_But if you close your eyes,  
Does it almost feel like  
Nothing changed at all?  
And if you close your eyes,  
Does it almost feel like  
You've been here before?  
How am I gonna be an optimist about this?  
How am I gonna be an optimist about this?_

It was after Mel and the twins died that he made the decision to travel back in time. Leo (the sonovabitch) had traded in the locations of several Resistance safehouses in exchange for his own freedom and Mel, Laura and Cassie fell defending the refugees from one of the houses. After Leo claimed it was for the Greater Good, that the Balance couldn't take the loss of another Elder Chris had stabbed him and sworn that he would kill him if he ever saw him again. He had then spent the best part of two years preparing to go to 2003 and find whatever had turned his brother and vanquish it. He had sworn, standing at the graves of the Halliwell family that if he couldn't save Wyatt he would kill him, he was the last Halliwell left alive on the side of Good after all so it was his responsibility to stand against evil.

 _Eheu eh-o eheu eh-o [x4]_

 _Oh where do we begin?  
The rubble or our sins?  
Oh oh where do we begin?  
The rubble or our sins?  
_

When he came back in time he spent several weeks stalking his family. Repeating a mantra in his head, _Piper, Phoebe, Paige, not Mom, not Aunt Pheebes or Auntie Paige. Don't think of bloody halos or blank, staring eyes. Piper, Phoebe, Paige._ He wasn't prepared for how much their casually cruel words ("Your not family, _trust_ you? I will get my son back myself and when I do I don't want to see you again,) or lack of recognition despite his slip ups (In all my life I have never seen you take the bait the way that witch took it from you. If you kill her, there won't be a future for either one of us to go back to and you know it,) would hurt so much.

 _And the walls kept tumbling down (oh where do we begin?)  
In the city that we love (the rubble or our sins?)  
Great clouds roll over the hills (oh where do we begin?)  
Bringing darkness from above (the rubble or our sins?)  
_

When Phoebe discovered the truth he didn't have the energy to lie anymore, his family hated him, he was going to cease to exist in two weeks if his parents didn't sleep together and he was desperate for an ally in _someone_ even if that ally was the aunt who had treated him the worst out of the two of them during his time in the past.

Somehow he managed to keep a stoic mask even when Piper and Leo disappeared the day he was due to be conceived and during their desperate attempts to find them but it cracked when he overheard Phoebe, (his own aunt) comment that maybe he wasn't meant to exist. When they spotted him though and the stricken look on his aunts' faces when they realized he had overheard he pulled himself together and hid under the mask like he'd been doing for years since Piper Halliwell died in his arms and got back to finding his parents.

 _But if you close your eyes,  
Does it almost feel like  
Nothing changed at all?  
And if you close your eyes,  
Does it almost feel like  
You've been here before?  
How am I gonna be an optimist about this?  
How am I gonna be an optimist about this?_

 _If you close your eyes, does it almost feel like nothing changed at all?_

Lying on his parents' bed bleeding from the wound Gideon gave him, Chris felt peaceful for the first time since he was fourteen even as his father, (and Leo had actually been his father these last few months, not like the man he was in Chris' timeline who'd essentially murdered hundreds of people including Mel, Laura and Cassie,) begged him to hold on and Paige sobbed in the doorway he spotted Clarence out of the corner his eye and let go.

Years later Chris was cleaning out the attic when he came across an old ring box. That night he proposed to his longtime girlfriend and several months later Christopher Halliwell and Bianca Phoenix married in the San Francisco Arboretum and Piper smiled at the two, content in the knowledge that her son was finally getting the happiness he deserved. Phoenix Hope Halliwell was born three years later on September fifth. __

_Eheu eh-o eheu eh-o [x8]_


End file.
